Please don’t call it ‘sleazegate’
Plus, Anglo-Italian parallels and poetry in translation
I’m in England this week with family so I’m slightly out of the loop with Italian news. Something that’s immediately struck me, though, and which I can’t resist commenting on briefly here, is how differently media in these two countries tend to present political scandals. If you don’t follow British affairs there’s currently a ruckus going on concerning parliamentarians in Westminster. Basically, some of them have second jobs as consultants (often earning vast amounts of money), and others are using their influence to secure state pandemic relief funds to companies they profit from. The Guardian has the full lowdown. In most countries this would be called “a serous culture of widespread corruption.” I remember in 2014, for example, when a similar story broke in Italy, talk was all about “embezzlement”, “fraud”, “extortion” and so on. In UK, though, the media are referring to it, rather sheepishly, as “sleaze”. It’s a funny one; and it reminds me how important framing is when it comes to holding those in power to account. “Corruption”, in Britain, is a word for bad politics that happens mainly in Southern and Eastern Europe, or else further afield. It is not a UK thing. And yet - surely! - people must know the City of London is one of the global centres for tax evasion; and that Cosa Nostra and the Camorra do far more business in that city than in, say, Naples or Rome. A few years ago the anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano even went as far as to label the UK “the world’s most corrupt nation” with some justification. This isn’t a game of tit for tat, of Italy vs Britain. But without accurate labels to describe what’s going on it’s hard to see how one could even begin to tackle the misconduct that’s currently coming to light.
My good friend Ismail Einashe – currently in Palermo – published a piece last week for the BBC about a group of Nigerian women who are standing up to people traffickers. Early in the article he quotes a pretty harrowing statistic from the International Organization for Migration (IOM): according to their research 11,000 Nigerian women were registered as landing in Sicily in 2016. 80% of them were trafficked and most of them have ended up in forced prostitution. Ismail’s main source is a woman named Osas Egbon who has set up a shelter, funded entirely by donation, to provide a safe refuge for those that need space to recover from their trauma. There’s lots more to be followed up on this topic of course, from the question of law and justice to the policing of organised crime, but this report is a powerful introduction and shines important light on at least one part of the solution.
Arts and culture: Tear Along the Dotted Line
Now this one’s exciting: a new series by the Italian illustrator and graphic novelist Zerocalcare dropped on Netflix yesterday and it’s already getting critical acclaim. If you’ve ever strolled through the comic book section of an Italian newsagent, or attended events at a centro sociale for that matter, the chances are you’ll have come across Zerocalcare’s work. His sense of humour has a sarcastic Gen-X jaded leftist flavour to it, and I’ve always found it pretty sympathetic. This is not an epic production. We’re talking 6 episodes of 15 minutes each, but the synopsis sounds enticing and suitably offbeat: "A cartoonist in Rome with his armadillo-for-a-conscience reflects on his path in life and a would-be love as he and his friends travel outside the city." I’ll be on this as soon as I’m back home.
I don’t know about you but I can never concentrate on reading when I’m travelling in and around airports. Most of the time I end up just scrolling through my phone over the same old links in a general state of anxious distraction. Well, this week, during my transit, I challenged myself to catch up on a few sites that I don’t keep up with enough, and lo and behold I quickly stumbled upon some Italian literary gems. Asymptote, the fabulous journal of translated fiction, was particularly stand out. They’ve published two new stories by Maria Attanasio, ‘The Splendour of Nothingness’ and Patrizia Cavalli, ‘Dancing Shoes’, both of which I enjoyed. My favourite by some way, though, were poems by Maria Borio rendered into English with remarkable lyricism by Danielle Pieratti. Here, as a taster, is the first stanza of ‘Isola’ (a district in Milan). But do check out the full poem here.
At night Isola’s high-rise glass
seems a fault on the horizon,
a half circle of building that commands
the power to make water solid
then liquefy at the moment
you’re done circumscribing
Recipe of the week: gnocchi with taleggio, radicchio tardivo and walnuts
This, by Giorgio Locatelli, is an absolute joy of a dish. Loosely based on the Piemontese classic gnocchi alla bava, he adds a handful of dark radicchio for colour and tops with some walnuts for an added crunch. Feel free to mess around further though. You might, for example, want to ground up the nuts to make a pesto, or perhaps bung some sautéed mushrooms or even speck in there. Store-bought gnocchi, by the way, is absolutely fine in this instance. The sauce is so unctuous and decadent that you can’t really go wrong. That said a good strong red wine is pretty much mandatory: something acidic but fruity like a Barbaresco or Barbera d'Asti to cut through the fat. Perfect for taking the edge off these first, early winter eves.
That’s it for this week - as ever I do hope you enjoyed this instalment. If you haven’t already, please do follow the ‘Week in Italy’ Facebook page, or my twitter, for a few extra links and easy-access to the substack archive. If this email was forwarded to you, or you’re accessing on the web and would like to receive further updates, you can subscribe using this link below. Thanks!
About Me
My name is Jamie Mackay (@JacMackay) and I’m an author, editor and translator based in Florence. I’ve been writing about Italy for a decade for international media including The Guardian, The Economist, Frieze, and Art Review. I launched ‘The Week in Italy’ to share a more direct and regular overview of the debates and dilemmas, innovations and crises that sometimes pass under the radar of our overcrowded news feeds.
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